Jon Shafer leaves Firaxis!

thbrown81 said:

Yup, non-disclosure agreement and a generic "We both decided to go in different directions" press release. Which means he was probably fired. If not, then he's bailing instead of working to fix a game that is still largely unplayable, but still has additional Civs available for almost $4.00 each!

Can everyone finally admit that CiV is a colossal failure?

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According to this article, "Civilization V... earned a 90 percent Metacritic score. Publisher Take-Two named the title as one of the key revenue and profit drivers for its most recent fiscal quarter." So, though disappointing to many hardcore fans, CiV is probably not a colossal failure by any objective consideration. I think Sneaks has it right:

Sneaks said:

I really am not so sure if he was let go or quit. The sales numbers are pretty solid. I think the figures have to be close to over 1 million units sold (.54m hard copies, and statements that digital Steam/D2D are over 50% of sales). The fanbase has certainly been loud expressing their displeasure with many aspects of the product, but many reviews have also been glowing as to how this game is far more appealing to the casual gamer. .

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Maybe he's a little burned out on CiV, and after the recent patch he might well be ready to move on to new challenges with a different company. Based on the success of CiV (as measured by sales and professional reviews), his star is rising and he probably has a lot of opportunities, so that seems plausible.

Now, I didn't even buy the game because based on the feedback here it sounds awful. But to anyone looking at Shafer's resume, CiV is a colossal success, not failure.

Guardian_PL said:

It's quite often at various jobs that people on leading positions are being "persuaded" to leave on their own - that way it looks better on their resume and everyone is happy.

It was obvious from the very beginning that Shafer is a disposable hero, a scapegoat in case anything goes wrong.

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This.
It's pretty much the same for politicians. Have you ever really seen a minister been fired? No, they all go on their own.

Immortals said:

Or maybe he just wanted to do something else? Most people change jobs every 4 or 5 years, seems about right given what I saw of his resume.

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But then you normally don't leave half finished projects back.

fantsu said:

Sometimes you need one turn of Anarchy!!! to get things go in the better way.

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@topic again: Wrong decission, 2K. like already said, kicking the lead designer during the development process can never be really good.

SuperJay said:

This is a minor detail, but please don't refer to me as a "naysayer." Preferably not one of any homogenous, vague glob of players, either. Those don't exist, as much as we all love to categorize one another as "haters" or "fanboys".

Going back to the news about Jon's departure... again, I wish him well and I hope he finds a place where he'll be successful in the future. And again: I don't think we should be too concerned with the private details of Jon's personal life. We're here to discuss the game itself, and what (if any) impact Jon's departure could have on its future.

For better or worse, I think Jon's departure may be a setback to the ongoing development of Civ5. As much as he gets villified, his absence means having to fill the role of lead designer with another developer, one who (presumably) isn't as familiar with the design and development of Civ5 (as a software project) as Jon is. Whether you like Jon or not, I think it's hard to deny that his departure will leave a void that's going to be hard to fill with someone who has the same degree of understanding and familiarity with Civ5. In the long run, it could mean a new direction for Civ5, but in the short-term, it might mean a longer wait between patches or patches that are less robust. It may also mean AI fixes (to the degree those are even possible) take longer to get released.

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I wasn't referring to you at all, though I was trying to be polite with the "naysayer" moniker. it was aimed more at people who think ciV is a war crime or those that quit playing the game months ago yet still come on here constantly to trash the devs.

I agree re the "setback" scenario.

I have a question re the "ai" problems. I read a deity cIV walkthrough a few months ago that was using a "smarter ai" mod. also, AND's creater iirc said that he spent 40+ hours reworking the cIV ai. is it really that easy, or is it just that easy b/c these were expert players using their own experiences with the game, etc? is 1upt so much harder to program that the ai is unfixable? it seems to me that a lot of the issues (like melee in front of ranged and focusing fire) should have been implemented before release by a reasonably civ-savvy programmer.


@the_J: my worry is that jon's "work" is done and now they're just going to dlc-spam us. I like the post-patch game much more, in fact I can actually have a good time playing it without mods now, but it still seems like there's a lot of cleaning up to do.

I love the solipsism of the Internet.

"Something happened and it was for reasons that support my point of view!"

So far, Jon Shafer, his boss(es), and maybe some of his colleagues know what happened, and that's it. As others have noted, it's most definitely not because of poor sales (sales have been strong) or bad reviews (*plenty* of good ones).

Does anyone here really think obsessive trashing by niche players on a fan forum would trump sales stats or major reviews?

For my part, I wish Shafer well, and thank him for his involvement in yet another highly addicting installation of the CIV series. Good luck!

"It's pretty much the same for politicians."

*cough* nick clegg *cough*

anyway, back on topic, I think that if this doesn't completely stop ciV, it will make it a lot better. Jon may simply have been too stubborn to make the radical changes that some parts of this game need (emphasis on some, I think most of the game works well)

eric_ said:

Does anyone here really think obsessive trashing by niche players on a fan forum would trump sales stats or major reviews?

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Apparently they do, given some of the posts in this thread. Yes, yes, I'm sure Shafer got so frustrated with some threads on CFC that he decided to quit Firaxis. And/or, Firaxis got so scared by mean people on the interwebs that they decided to fire their lead designer.

But yeah, I agree with you, up until the "highly addictive installation in the Civ series" part.

SuperJay said:

For better or worse, I think Jon's departure may be a setback to the ongoing development of Civ5. As much as he gets villified, his absence means having to fill the role of lead designer with another developer, one who (presumably) isn't as familiar with the design and development of Civ5 (as a software project) as Jon is.

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Speculative.
We all should take a step back and make an attempt at rationalizing the consequences.
-- It's not as if the whole Firaxis development house is shutting down for good.
-- Give some credits to the dev teams that actually made v1135 possible too. One man can captain the boat, but sailors crawl on deck, the cook feeds all, cannons handled and aimed by men.

Who really knows what another lead *might* decide, given as much design freedoms as Shafer had to work with.
Meier's might even be lurking in the shadows to stir up mood & smiles -- after all, he's the lone owner of all best & worst Civilization titles (barring the latest 2K shares, only).

Decisions, decisions -- i've never ever met a businessman that waits. Punch, drunk, slump, quick conclusions in continual planning. And, trust fate. Now, today, this very minute.
The next LD now has a precious chance in the bazillions.

Don't forget... X-Com is under the radar and THAT too may be another reason why chairs are being shuffled, filled, stirred for some predictable cash.
Business as usual.
Life goes on.

el_hidalgo said:

According to this article, "Civilization V... earned a 90 percent Metacritic score. Publisher Take-Two named the title as one of the key revenue and profit drivers for its most recent fiscal quarter." So, though disappointing to many hardcore fans, CiV is probably not a colossal failure by any objective consideration. I think Sneaks has it right:

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Take Two's earnings report was conspicious in not naming Civilization 5 in anything but the one sentence in which all its releases of the fourth quarter were listed (except some DLC and Dora's Big Birthday Adventure and Cooking Club releases) and all of them were said to be significant contributors to revenues - the only other mention of civ5 in their earnings report was ... not terribly well informed to say the least Essentially those reports are based on nothing really since Take Two didn't release figures due to their transition of the fiscal year calendar which allows them to postpone most figures to April 2011.

I think i'll have to look up who Nick Clegg is .

bryanw1995 said:

@the_J: my worry is that jon's "work" is done and now they're just going to dlc-spam us. I like the post-patch game much more, in fact I can actually have a good time playing it without mods now, but it still seems like there's a lot of cleaning up to do.

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Um... that's not completely unrealistic, but let's hope they have a good schedule and a plan how to proceed (and i mean in a good way...).

Considering the tough economic times and also the time of the year, I hope he did leave voluntarily and has another position lined up, hopefully one in which he gets a little more help/supervision from more experienced designers.

On the other hand, I have to admit to having suddenly got a newfound small surge of hope that Civ 5 may be fixable in some way, with someone new (or preferably an old hand) brought in to try and fix what many feel is a very flawed game design.

Zyxpsilon said:

Speculative.

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This whole thread is speculative. But the part of my post that you quoted is about the least speculative bit in it. Jon was the Lead Designer for Civ 5; he is no longer working for Firaxis; they will likely hire or promote a new Lead Designer for Civ 5 to replace Jon. That's pretty reasonable speculation.

I don't understand enough of the rest of your post to respond to it. I'm not even sure what "rationalizing the consequences" means.

cannons handled and aimed by men.

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Hey, not all sailors swing that way!

The_J said:

I think i'll have to look up who Nick Clegg is .

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Leader of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK, and currently deputy Prime Minister of the UK.

That's pretty reasonable speculation.

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I agree it's a fair bet that 2K isn't cutting ciV loose.

hardcore_gamer said:

The link the OP gave outright states that he left on his own.

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That means nothing. Most people who abruptly resign from high paying positions "on their own" do so because they were given the option to resign "on their own" and receive a portion of their remaining contract, or be fired for cause, get no money and have their reputation destroyed. Obviously we'll never know for sure, but it's more than likely that he was canned. There's definitely credence to the theory that he got fed up with being forced to roll out an unfinished product, but I don't get the feeling that Shafer was fighting to keep the game more Civ IVish. The guy just wanted to play Panzer General over a 6000 year time frame. The problem was, no one else did.

civnoob13 said:

anyway, back on topic, I think that if this doesn't completely stop ciV, it will make it a lot better. Jon may simply have been too stubborn to make the radical changes that some parts of this game need (emphasis on some, I think most of the game works well)

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Not necessarily true.
Jon may have wanted longer to work on the original game, but forced to release it in Sept. Then essentially had an "I told you so" to firaxis b/c bugs and changes that needed to be made. Then decided that firaxis was going to dictate things too much. He knew he was going to leave, agreed to work through the patch then left once that was done. Basically saying you guys at firaxis do what you want now b/c the game that I thought was going to be "mine" is really just firaxis telling me what to do.

As I understand Jon is pretty young so I could totally see higher ups wanting to continually throw in their two cents regardless of the effects on the game.

Its clear there were at least two different visions of civ 5. No need to look further than Social policies and their immediate changes. On the original release it was clearly intended that those could be saved and used whenever the player wanted, then all of a sudden a pretty major change to force using them right away (yes you could still check to use the old way). Why such the drastic change? It wasn't just to prevent slingshots since that could have been done in other less drastic ways. Clearly there was an original intent of someone or some group that potentially lost out and a "simplier" fix was implemented.

Note: My post is not designed to argue of Social Policies or changes in the new patch, I just used the SP change as an example to show how you can have different "visions" at the start and can be over ruled by another party.

thbrown81 said:

That means nothing. Most people who abruptly resign from high paying positions "on their own" do so because they were given the option to resign "on their own" and receive a portion of their remaining contract, or be fired for cause, get no money and have their reputation destroyed. Obviously we'll never know for sure, but it's more than likely that he was canned. There's definitely credence to the theory that he got fed up with being forced to roll out an unfinished product, but I don't get the feeling that Shafer was fighting to keep the game more Civ IVish. The guy just wanted to play Panzer General over a 6000 year time frame. The problem was, no one else did.

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no, the problem was more that it was such a radical design change from that which was expected/hoped for that the critics have been very vocal about it. actual sales figures look to be in line with previous civ iterations, though 2k might have anticipated that they would be higher.

hardcore_gamer said:

The link the OP gave outright states that he left on his own.

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It's like saying I jumped from a 20 story building of my own free will. But the building was on fire.

Sure he left on his own, but maybe he didn't feellike burning to death.

bryanw1995 said:

no, the problem was more that it was such a radical design change from that which was expected/hoped for that the critics have been very vocal about it. actual sales figures look to be in line with previous civ iterations, though 2k might have anticipated that they would be higher.

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The critics that would count as far as 2K and Firaxis are concerned were only vocal in slapping 9's and 10's on it after playing for a half an hour and writing a quick article for their website.

The players who criticize the game (like my colleagues here at CFC) are extremely unlikely to figure into personnel decisions at a company like Firaxis.

SuperJay said:

..that you quoted is about the least speculative bit in it.

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Setback.
I was referring to that simple word only. Sorry for the confusion.
Guilty as charged.
What's my punishment?
Fired, also!